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To: Harmless Teddy Bear
All color M&M's are dumped into a hopper where a certain number are then dropped into the little bag. To have the colors equal they would have to have six hoppers and the bag would have to stop six times. This would be a waste of space, time and money.

So, if this is the case we can assume that one in roughly every 28,430,288,029,929,700,000 bags of peanut butter M&M's will have all the same color. (26 in my bag so the odds would be 1 in 6^25.)

61 posted on 07/29/2009 11:15:04 AM PDT by the_devils_advocate_666
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To: the_devils_advocate_666

“All color M&M’s are dumped in a hopper....”

I don’t actually know how the M&M’s are done, but I would bet they operate like the machines I used to use. Here it is in a nutshell: First, M&M’s are sold by weight. Let’s assume each color costs the same to make. (Although they probably don’t - I don’t know but I would guess you would have more of the cheaper colors in most packages.See my post at #60.) You have a multitude of small hoppers, each with varying amounts of M&M’s. Each hopper is individually weighed, and then the precise (or very close to it without being underweight) amount goes into the bag. It’s all controlled by computer and is very fast. The key here is this - each individual M&M’s weight is a little different, and I don’t want to give any M&M’s away, I want to sell them.


81 posted on 07/29/2009 11:34:24 AM PDT by Jubal Madison (Sic Semper Tyrannis)
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